That Time Jeff Bezos Got It Completely F*cking Wrong

Everyone loves to quote Bezos.

The “regret minimization framework.”

The Day 1 memo.

The memo about memos.

But there’s something no one wants to talk about. Because it doesn’t fit the poster-child version of Amazon.

Something that almost torched the whole thing…

Let’s rewind to early Amazon.

Bezos had just built the ultimate flywheel. Customers were obsessed. Wall Street was drooling.

But inside?

Employees were quietly breaking.

Amazon, under Bezos, created a feedback tool that let employees report each other — anonymously — to management.

Yes.

An internal snitch line.

Couple that with quotas, stack-ranking, and an algorithmic approach to performance…

And you get a culture where people are productive as hell — right up until they burn out, quit, or start crying in the bathroom between meetings.

This is what happens when optimization becomes religion.

When you forget that your company isn't a machine.

It's a nervous system.

Bezos was brilliant — but he wasn’t always right.

And what he got very wrong was this:

You can’t lead people with spreadsheets.

You can incentivize behavior. You can track output. But the moment you manage humans like code, you lose everything you can’t measure:

• Trust

• Initiative

• Loyalty

• Creativity

• Soul

If your team doesn’t feel safe, they won’t give you their best work. They’ll give you just enough to stay out of trouble.

Which is exactly how you build a culture of mediocrity.

Even if it’s dressed up in world-class metrics and a killer deck.

I’m not here to tell you Bezos was a bad leader.

Because he’s not.

But don’t confuse empire-building with human building.

The former scales revenue.

The latter scales resilience.

If you want a business that lasts — not just one that grows — you need to remember:

Humans don’t follow formulas.

They follow energy. They follow clarity. And they follow care.

Even Bezos had to learn that the hard way.

Best,
Peter Delle

P.S. Work Ethic? Or Well-Packaged Panic?